Jazz patriarch

The walls of Ben Tucker's downtown apartment are ornamented with memorabilia, family photos and works of art - items as varied and resonant in meaning as the man whom most know simply as Savannah's patriarch of jazz.

A watercolor of Hank Aaron, autographed twice.

A chalk drawing of Malcolm X bought in New York City for $20.

A Nefertiti-like woman, rendered by the same artist, whose shawl slips below a bare breast.

Hanging prominently across from the balcony, which overlooks the tree-lined boulevard of Liberty Street and the stately steeples of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, is a black-and-white photograph.

It captures the family of Gloria, Tucker's wife, and was taken in Grenada, the Caribbean island her ancestors called home. She grew up in New York, where she met Tucker after going to one of his many gigs.

Thirty-nine years later, she points to a painting capturing life not long after moving to Savannah in the early 1970s: Tucker, decked out in an electric blue suit and wild frizzy hair, performing his "bass violin" with Savannah's jazz all-stars: Teddy Adams, Claude Rhea and Huxsie Scott.

Those were the days," Tucker said.

'The voice of the black community'

The Savannah Music Festival honors Ben Tucker this week with a concert celebrating his 75th birthday.

The show, which will take place Wednesday night at Orleans Hall, is the latest of an action-packed career that grew rapidly after moving to New York.

There, the young bassist, fresh out of the Air Force, worked as a session player cutting records with the likes of Billy Taylor, Illinois Jacquet and Tommy Flanagan.

He also wrote hundreds of songs, including his biggest hit, "Comin' Home Baby," which went on to be covered by Mel Torme, Quincy Jones and Marian McPartland.

Tucker's arrival in Savannah came in 1972 after making a pile of money from the rights to a hit song called "Sunny."

That's when he bought AM station WSOK for $400,000 with partners from Black Communications Corp., a company that aimed to make media outlets more responsive to the needs of black Americans.

The move made Tucker, who chaired the firm, the first African American to own a radio station in Savannah and only the 15th black man to do so in the country.

For all that he's known for - performing with Peggy Lee, founding the Telfair Jazz Society, starting up 101.1 WLVH, running Hard-Hearted Hannah's - perhaps Tucker is best known for taking WSOK to the top of the radio waves for 13 years.

With his success came a fundamental change: Black radio, it was suddenly clear, could be profitable as well as empowering to the uneducated and disenfranchised.

"I was the voice of the black community," Tucker said.

Thinking about 'my people'

For a septuagenarian, Tucker moves pretty good. He talks the way he plays jazz: a steady torrent of fresh ideas elaborated on over time and punctuated by toe tapping and wild gesticulation.